Transplanting a Seattleite

I have long used the phrase, “Wants Don’t Have Whys”. I developed it for my children, altho I had believed the underlying principle since I was a teenager, mulishly stubborn in feeling a certain way and resistant to efforts to try to convince me I didn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t or was somehow wrong for feeling that way. I don’t mean, hey, you are yawning, perhaps you need a nap, you only got a few hours sleep last night because you were up late and early after. That is a want (not enough sleep that must be remediated) that has a why (happens on the regular, and there was a supply gap). But that’s not what I mean by Wants Don’t Have Whys. That’s just a “why now”, not a “why at all”. And I don’t know that we really understand still the need for sleep. I didn’t invent it for the basic needs to sleep or eat — I invented it for things like, I am attracted to or are charmed by this person and not that person, or this pastry and not that pickle. Trying to convince someone with persuasive argument and/or logic that they don’t really love german chocolate cake is, well, just don’t do it. And even more so for who they find attractive. I have long distinguished between things that are good or well done, but which I don’t care for, and the things that I like, in an effort to meet people halfway but I probably could have skipped that and gone straight to, whatever, dude, I hate it.

Anyway. New one! Tools Not Rules. I’ve been using the idea of a “frame” to figure out which set of principles / rules / guidelines to apply in a given situation; it replaced a hierarchy with jurisdictional components which honestly didn’t work great for me. It dawned on me that instead of explaining this as different sets of principles / rules / guidelines, I could just, whatever, dude, I hate rules. I use tools. And now the things I used to call principles / rules / guidelines are explicitly, hey try this and see if it’s helpful.

Tools Not Rules.

This is almost certainly wildly unclear and there will be misunderstandings galore (possibly in the comments) and I will attempt to elucidate to anyone who conveys their confusion or vehement disapproval, until I decide it reflects poorly on your character and I don’t know you anyway and just go back to ignoring things that I view as someone very clearly being themselves and not requiring my involvement or assistance.

But I’m so happy to have another punchy tag! Tools Not Rules!

I did not walk with M., because it was so hot so early. We did have a morning visit however.

I think that something went wrong when the HVAC folks came out, because the first and attic are holding temp, but nothing’s coming out most of the vents on the second floor and it’s not holding temp at all. I’ve opened the door up the stairs to the attic, so that cool from there can fall down to the second floor. We have all the ceiling fans running, which might help things along. I also took a cold shower. I’d planned a shower anyway, because we got our hair cut today (last cut before C. goes on maternity leave but we already have our September appointments made, so there’s that), and I hate the little bits of hair that make me itch all over. I just didn’t use any warm water. That was a little shocking, but pleasant. ETA the heat is rising to the attic, but it’s not clear if any meaningful cool is falling. The humidity rose in the attic, too. I was really hoping this would work. Hmmmm.

I am communicating with the person in charge of the ongoing construction, so maybe something will happen altho it’ll probably be after this big heat spike. But maybe in time for the next heat spike.

R. mentioned that the grass could use mowing, so I arranged with the neighbor who just graduated from high school (via his mom) to do it later this week. I would just pay to have all the yard work done by professionals all the time, but R. enjoys doing it so I don’t want to take away from him, but also somewhat annoying that handling the hiatus became my responsibility.

I did the OAC / MEPFP meeting remotely. Yay!

An upcoming StayCity upgrade offer appeared in my email. I bid on it, and did not get it, but they offered me a different one, and I looked at it and compared it to getting an additional studio room (since R. will be joining us for that stay after all) and it was only about 50E more take the ridiculous offer instantly. So I did. Felt weird, but no regrets. It’s a villa, with more rooms that we can use, but that price point.

The house is staying comfortable, tho, and the thunderstorm that preceded the heat of the day was not too bad. I even got a walk with M.

I’ve run the shredder a bit. I’ve been playing a game and texting with Priestess. I’ve walked around with A. a couple of times, to help her with some indigestion and just generally to stay active.

R. asked me to bring him some t-shirts and aspirin, so that’s ready to pack. Seems weird not to just buy some where he is, tho, since it’ll be a looooong wait, but *shrug*. He has time to change his mind.

The temperature is coming down in the evening, fortunately, altho I’m not sure how far. Window thermometer is saying 82 at around 8 pm. I had served the last of the pre-cooked chicken to A. yesterday, so today was steak. Because I had heard about impulse labs’ “dry sous-vide”, and because I have some great thermometers (thermapen for interior and one of the red-light things for exterior), I decided to cook a steak in a pan on the stove, even tho it was kinda thick. I did it pretty low, turned it a bunch and kept checking it, then I took out about half when it was bloody because there was more than A. was going to eat tonight, and put the rest in and hit it on high to bring it to medium rare with a little crust. Seems to have worked out okay. I found some open red wine in the fridge to deglaze the pan. If it cools down enough tonight, I’ll probably cook the package of chicken that is in the fridge thawed. I still have one serving of my fried chicken tenders. I’ve been making stirfried vegetables with the home made marmalade, soy sauce, green garlic, cilantro and whatever vegetables look appealing and/or in need of being eaten. We’re out of red apples and really low on baby carrots and both kinds of lettuce. I may need to get some more food tomorrow.

I had a delightful zoom with I.

We did family zoom, so I sang Happy Birthday to J.

R. had his first “real” ride and judging by the strava etc. posts it went well.

I had a great long phone call with J.

FF was enjoyable. Priestess did not make an appearance because she was at an African restaurant with the new beau and fingers crossed they both had an excellent time.

Duo really struggled today, but I did what I needed to, and updated the folks sharing my family plan, so that was nice.

I walked with M. I did a second post FF walk listening to If Books Could Kill. I figured it was fine as long as the airpods were on Transparent. There wasn’t any one but me out and about anyway. Nice night for it, too.

I made fried chicken today. The piano tuner, MW, described his technique, which is less “dredging” and more “pack that stuff in there”, and I was inspired. I tossed some spices in (red pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, cumin, no salt because I was frying in bacon drippings) and wound up with something very close to Zatarains Hot and Spicy, but fresher. Yummy. I had a salad with it, and I had it again in a stir fry for dinner. Sweet Potato Pie and fried chicken makes for a really delightful week of eating.

I got the enormous porter out for FF and drank it very slowly. Very pleasant.

It was in the morning instead of the evening, so it was a reason to get A. up and out the door. I walked with M. in the afternoon. I had a slightly abbreviated (started 15 minutes late to allow time to get home from therapy) conversation with J. It ended about a half an hour early because we ran out of things to talk about. Because he’s so tired all the time (and yes, I know I’m making excuses for him), he has very limited patience and cognitive capacity for the kinds of conversations I love like, How Does This Thing Work Anyway or How Is Our Society Changing or How Could We Bend the Curve of Our Society in a Better Direction. People like this kind of stuff very occasionally, and they get tired real quick, and aging isn’t helping any of us become more flexible. Priestess is actually getting more capable of it over time, which is an interesting contrast, and A. (both Bay Area A. and my daughter) is also a lot of fun to engage in this kind of thing with.

I’m trying to refocus on getting that kind of stuff written down, either here or elsewhere, rather than inflicting it on people who Just Aren’t That Into It. At first, with J., I was being really careful to make sure he got all the time he needed to talk about whatever he wanted to talk about at the beginning of the conversation. But he was still pretty cranky at intervals and honestly kind of rude. I thought about that for a while, and weighed whether and how to proceed, and I’ve decided to just not, which is more or less the approach I take with my sister as well. It’s working better, altho it is deeply hilarious when there are half-assed efforts made to get me to talk about something. I just deflect. It’s not like they are asking for the kind of thing I want to talk about. I mention whatever is going on in my daily life, and they aren’t necessarily interested in that, either. It does raise a lot of questions in my mind in terms of, what would the ideal conversation be for these conversational “partners”. Presumably they don’t know either?

J. from the builder provided a markup of the cover sheet for the electrical submittal — I had not done that, and it did need to be done. I further marked up what she did, and then it was really hard to get those markups transferred so I wound up taking screenshots. *shudder*

I got a second walk today! First time in a really long time. It was nice, and I’m going to try to do this more often.

I read Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks because it is this month’s book group selection. I look forward to chatting about it. It was a highly enjoyable read and I’m a little bummed that her sister Darleen Bungey’s book about their dad isn’t available as an e-book. Maybe some day.

I went grocery shopping. I walked with M.

I think next up is making blondies, because I’m completely out, and then dinner and book group.

ETA

Blondies were good. Book group was enjoyable.

I’ll probably go wake A. up in a bit, but it’s the first weekend after school is out for her, and I just cannot imagine a better way to spend that than sleeping. I did tell her I’d be getting her up before noon so we could go buy R. a belated birthday card / present and a Father’s Day whatever. (I did take him out for two really nice dinners over the last couple days, and I made him a cake on his birthday, so it’s not like we did him wrong or anything.)

I recently dug out my electric toothbrush, determined that it still charged and worked, and then contemplated whether to list it. In the event, I instead went in search of replacement heads that were soft bristles, and I couldn’t find ones that were the correct shape (it’s an Oral B Vitality Dual Clean from 2010 that owes me absolutely nothing), but it looked like that was a standard connector so I ordered a box of very cheap replacements that purported to be soft, and are the more standard round. Seems great! I have no idea whether I’m going to keep using this or not, but I feel good about having thought about what caused me to give up on the electric toothbrush, researching possible solutions and finding one. There are a lot of things from that point in my life (given the age of the kids and what was going on with school and so forth) that weren’t working well and I abandoned them without fully completing the problem solving around them. That was the right choice at the time, but it’s incredibly satisfying as I am decluttering to find these things, and finish that process. Especially when it appears, as in this situation, to work.

Just before we left the house for the Residence Inn, I picked up the Amazon delivery out of the garage. It contained the Musicozy sleep mask, which I set up while at the hotel. It’s really pretty amazing. I haven’t decided what I’m bringing on the upcoming transatlantic, but this might be it. I also got one of those rechargeable battery usb-c oral irrigators that J. from the builder said cut her gums. I made sure the one I picked defaulted to a low setting. It is fairly effective at that lowest setting for my purposes (clearing out pockets) and it’s small enough to travel with so it’s probably going with me on future trips. I’m really happy about that. For a while, we traveled with one of the No Power ones that you attach to the faucet, but a lot of the faucets these days don’t work with the adapter. It’s nice to have this back, especially since we have some longer trips coming up over the summer. Figuring this stuff out while sitting in a hotel with nothing in particular that I had to do right away was really quite calm and relaxing.

Also in that order was a Long Enough gold-color handbag chain, that looks really nice on the Minnie barrel bag! I’m quite excited about it, especially because the chain is very light.

R. typically travels with a bullnose clip or a large foldback clip or clips, so he can make hotel blackout curtains not have that horrible line of light (which if the parking lot is well-lit can be 24 hours). This particular Residence Inn had curtains that crossed the whole window (right stack, if you care) in each room, rather than center split (they also had Somfy operators, which was interesting), so the clips were not needed (well, it would have been nice to have something on the left edge, but the clips would not fix that). Those clips are metal in whole (the bullnose) or in part (the foldback), and I’ve developed a real sensitivity to metal in carryon luggage (translation: I’d like as little reason as possible in my luggage to slow my progress through the TSA checkpoint). I was poking around in search of an alternate solution, and came across the two pack Curtain Clip Pro, which seemed mildly ridiculous but worth a shot. It arrived, and I have center split curtains in the eat-in part of my kitchen, so I tried it there and it works quite nicely. I have my doubts about what it will do on blackouts (because they can be very thick), but they are light, so I’m going to give them a try. They are also entirely plastic, which was most of the point of this exercise.

I got to thinking a lot over the last few days about the transition to renewables, batteries, regulation and resistance. I’m going to to write something about that, but this post is long enough.

It is A.’s last day of school!

I got a vegan chocolate chip cookie and vegan peanut butter chocolate chip coconut milk ice cream at a Cookie Monstah in Burlington. Both were very yummy.

I bought an alabaster “hurricane”, which I intend to put a small, rechargeable LED light in. There is space to run a small cord through the bottom, so I may get a usb-c rechargeable one and leave it plugged in all the time, control it with Alexa, and it would keep working even in a power outage. I bought it at Cabot House. It’s an “Eichholtz” and quite lovely. I went there to look at the same brand’s Terzo dining table, but they didn’t have any on the floor. It’s a candidate for the 3 bistro table combining to make one dining table idea for the new house. Not at all what I initially had in mind, but it’s got a black ceramic top and a brass pedestal base and it looks cool and might work really well. R. has some concerns it might scuff, because it is shiny.

We had lunch at Common Craft. I got the Exhibit A Porter, because it is yum, and the dumplings, which were also yummy.

R. went to the costco and came back with legos. That may be next.

The steak tips at Tavern on the Square are marinated. Sigh. A. does not like that. There’s a Shake Shack at the Mall so we got her custard and a burger there. Mall closes up early. R. and I had dinner at Row 34. We each had one of each of the 10 oysters. Yum. I had the tuna tartare. I also had the Very Olde St Nick Harvest Rye with a big rock (I asked for the big rock), and it was tasty. R. had a mezcal drink that was yummy, and I had the mocktail which was probably the best of all three. Would go back just for the mocktail. So much flavor.

Inspector came out and signed off on the electrical work. Yay!

I drove out to Florence early and did my three meetings. Circulation stair down to pink world is in place, so that was exciting! Also, the doors onto the deck off of the master suite were installed, so that was cool. The numbers from the metal artist look fine to me. And I am very cautiously optimistic about the custom door maker. Fingers crossed.

I caught up on Odd Lots. I’d never heard of India’s UPI. That’s amazing! The future looks so bright at moments like this.

The carpet for the attic room is apparently backordered and so won’t be installed for a couple months. I may call the contractor and discuss alternatives, but honestly, the only house guest I have lined up is coming while T. is out of the house so it hardly matters and everything is so delayed anyway.

I’m doing laundry, because we’re down to A.’s last pair of shorts. I made a single layer, heart shaped chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for R.’s bday. I stopped at Stop and Shop for the confectioners sugar to make the frosting, and didn’t notice it was tapioca starch instead of corn starch. Flavor is subtle, but probably a mistake for me, altho honestly it didn’t set me off as much as tapioca in general does.

I stayed up ludicrously late reading in bed, which was very fun and also kind of stupid. I finished the first book in Leigh Miller’s Monster Relations Bureau (Nora’s Kraken) and then foolishly started the second and read it, too (Kenna’s Dragon). The whole cozy / spicy / monster romance thing is surreal and also awesome if you are in the right headspace for it.

After reading a bunch of stuff about hypersomnia, I’ve become really leery about caffeine (this happens to me at intervals, often in the summer time, so I try to just roll with it and not necessarily justify / defend it, but assume it’s the Right Thing for Me Right Now when it happens) again. I’m not giving up my morning tea (because that is always an error), but I’m going to go back to no more afternoon coffee. Of course deciding this after staying awake late reading is its own kind of mistake. LOL

I walked with M.

I made blondies.

I did some decluttering. We’re moving along some of the many headlamps. We don’t use any, but we for sure do not need 6. I pulled some stuff that was staged in the garage to go to donation, and listed things, like the Hue Bloom lights, which are already out the door. That also included water spray toys, which when I put them in the garage were not in season but are definitely in season now.

I had a delightful zoom with I.

I got a shower this morning, and A. took one this afternoon before her online playdate, so I guess we’re a little ahead there.

Family zoom was enjoyable.